The goal of the new contacts design was part of a greater effort to redesign and rethink the user workflow in the Good for Enterprise App and create an experience that allows users to be more productive using native solutions. The design team worked to create a design framework that would be based on native behaviors with added enterprise features.
From the research I conducted, I broke down the feature to these key user environments:
This experience led to the sales staff advocating for more in-person user research with their customers as they presented the impact of my work in C-level meetings. This allowed me to help foster a user-centered culture within the company.
According to the card sorting exercise, the most important information needed to easily view a contact list is (in order of priority):
For personal contact, usually the only information available is the phone number. In this example, the area code is useful information for the user to easily recognize.
This example is a hybrid of the first two, using the email address and the phone number as identifiers.
When searching for a contact, the user relies on contextual information to find the correct contact. Because the search feature searches both the user's personal contact list and the company distribution list, it is essential to include historical and contextual functionality while searching from a large repository.
In the first screen, it shows recent search queries before the user types anything. This makes it easy for the user to view recent or frequent searches without needing to retype or remember what they previously typed.
In the second screen, the user has entered a search query and the search results UI is laid out similar to the default contact list, but with additional information. Users mentioned that when doing a look-up, office location was an important differentiator and also helped to navigate them enroute to meetings. This UI is helpful as the user has enough information to make their decision and does not need to navigate into contact details to find location and GPS information.
At this point of the interaction, the user needs to find additional information they didn't have in previous screens. This includes availability, Out of Office or Presence Message, time zone information, work meta data, additional contact numbers or emails, and notes.
The biggest benefit for enterprise users with this screen is the presence and availability information under the photo. Often times, the busy presence icon is not enough and not all users leave a Presence message. The "New York 3:30 PM EST" gives the user context of what part of the work day the contact is in. The "Free at 2:30 PST" is helpful as the user can easily understand their schedule without having to do any mental calculations.